Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited the Wirra Wirra winery in McLaren Vale where he talked up the advantages of the new Trans-Pacific Partnership for Australia’s wine industry.
The TPP-11, which was signed by 11 countries in Chile last week, will eliminate more than 98 per cent of tariffs in a trade zone with a GDP of $13.7 trillion that spans the Americas and Asia.
The PM said the new deal was a boost for Australian businesses and in particular for the wine industry which is seeing the importance of export growing rapidly.
“There are $2.8bn of Australian wine exported every year, more than half of them from South Australia and enabled by the Free Trade Agreements that we have negotiated in Japan, Korea and China,” the Prime Minister said during his visit to the Wirra Wirra winery.
“The TPP-11, which will lower the barriers and the tariffs on wine going into Canada, Malaysia, Mexico and other countries in the TPP.”
We export about 20 per cent of what we make and we are always looking for more, so growth would definitely come from overseas. It’s not an easy place to go, but it is certainly one that we have had our eyes on,” said David Michell, the Chairman of Wirra Wirra.
“Changes to free trade is always a positive outcome for anyone in the business. Anything that reduces administration barriers to trade is actually a positive outcome. While it’s not an instantaneous fix, it’s certainly going in the right direction and will no doubt help us.”
After the deal was signed last week, TheShout reported that the Chief Executive of the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia, Tony Battaglene welcomed the agreement, saying it was great news for Australia’s wine exporters.
“TPP-11 offers tremendous opportunities for our sector through a range of tariff reductions as well as addressing non-tariff barriers,” he said.
“For wine, it’s often the non-tariff barriers which present more of a cost in emerging export markets. The wine annex is a means of addressing those barriers and something we have and will continue to push strongly in all Australian trade negotiations.”
The new deal has been re-negotiated after the United States withdrew from the original TPP and as well as Australia, the other signatory countries are: Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam.